Causal associations between body fat accumulation and COVID-19 severity: A Mendelian randomization study.

Previous studies reported associations between obesity measured by body mass index (BMI) and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). However, BMI is calculated only with height and weight and cannot distinguish between body fat mass and fat-free mass. Thus, it is not clear if one or both of these measures are mediating the relationship between obesity and COVID-19. Here, we used Mendelian randomization (MR) to compare the independent causal relationships of body fat mass and fat-free mass with COVID-19 severity. We identified single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with body fat mass and fat-free mass in 454,137 and 454,850 individuals of European ancestry from the UK Biobank, respectively. We then performed two-sample MR to ascertain their effects on severe COVID-19 (cases: 4,792; controls: 1,054,664) from the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative. We found that an increase in body fat mass by one standard deviation was associated with severe COVID-19 (odds ratio (OR)

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Copyright © 2022 Yoshiji, Tanaka, Minamino, Lu, Butler-Laporte, Murakami, Fujita, Richards and Inagaki.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

JBR institution has received investigator–initiated grant funding from Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline and Biogen for projects unrelated to this research. He is the founder of 5 Prime Sciences (www.5primesciences.com), which provides research services for biotech, pharma and venture capital companies for projects unrelated to this research. NI received research funds from Terumo Corp., Drawbridge, Inc., and Asken Inc. NI received speaker honoraria from Kowa Co., Ltd., MSD K.K, Astellas Pharma Inc., Novo Nordisk Pharma Ltd., Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Nippon Boehringer Ingelheim Co., Ltd., Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corp., Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma Co., Ltd., Sanofi K.K., Eli Lilly Japan K.K., received scholarship grant from Kissei Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Sanofi K.K., Daiichi–Sankyo Co., Ltd., Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corp., Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Japan Tobacco Inc., Kyowa Kirin Co., Ltd., Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma Co., Ltd., Astellas Pharma Inc., MSD K.K., Ono Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Sanwa Kagaku Kenkyusho Co., Ltd., Nippon Boehringer Ingelheim Co., Ltd., Novo Nordisk Pharma Ltd., Novartis Pharma K.K., and Life Scan Japan K.K. NI is an advisory board member of Novo Nordisk. These agencies did not play any role in study design, the collection, analysis, or interpretation of data, the writing of the report, or the decision to submit this paper for publication. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.